Mong Kok affected by pollution from thousands of restaurant kitchens, study finds

Cooking fumes from roadside snack shops and restaurants may impart mouthwatering aromas - but in Mong Kok, they are an even bigger source of some kinds of harmful air pollution than vehicles, a new study has shown.

The restaurants are releasing an alarming amount of organic particulate matter (PM), the study says, and one of its co-authors is urging the government to do more to tackle cooking-related emissions.

The researcher, Professor Chan Chak-keung, said restaurants were a long-neglected source of pollution, contributing to about a third of organic particulate emissions in Mong Kok.

The Mong Kok study, conducted over four months in 2013, was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. It was the first time cooking emissions had been directly assessed in the city.

In Mong Kok, it was found that organic matter composed about half of what is known as PM1, or particulates smaller than one micron in diameter.